How to loose weight by using calorie reduction.
The calories in what you eat and drink each day play a role in your weight and health. They help your body produce energy. While it's difficult to choose perfectly healthy foods 100 percent of the time, it's important that you eat healthy (nutritiously) most of the time. Knowing the role calories play in your health is necessary so that you can choose healthier foods.
A Balancing Act
When it comes to weight, excess calories cause weight gain, and not enough calories can cause you to be underweight. Consuming enough, but not too many, calories helps your body maintain a delicate energy balance. Oversize portions and high-calorie junk foods play a large role in excess calorie consumption. Choosing lean meats and fruits and vegetables is a way to manage your calories.
Weight Loss Basics
Your diet is one of the most important factors in how successful you are at losing weight. Genetics, age, gender, ethnicity, and medical conditions and medications also affect weight loss success, but the basic idea is that if you eat more calories than your body burns for energy each day, you'll gain weight. If you eat fewer calories than your body needs each day, you'll lose weight.
Therefore, whether you eat three times a day or 12 times a day, what matters most is keeping your calorie intake below your calorie expenditure.
Since exercise is another important component of weight loss, you should aim for a moderately active to active lifestyle. If you're a moderately active man between the ages of 26 and 45, you need around 2,500 calories a day.
A moderately active woman in the same age range needs approximately 2,000 calories each day.
These are the calories you need to maintain your weight. To lose weight, you need to eat fewer calories.
Divide Calories Evenly
One way to determine how many calories to eat at each meal is to divide your calories evenly per meal, allowing yourself some calories for snacks. For example, if your calorie goal is to eat 1800 calories daily, you might want to eat 500 calories at each of your three meals -- 150 calories during your morning snack and 150 calories during your afternoon snack.
Tapering Calories
Another option is to taper your calories throughout the day, eating several small meals every couple of hours. For example, if you allow yourself to eat 1800 calories each day, FitWatch recommends eating 450 calories at your first and second meals, 360 calories at your third meal and 270 calories at your fourth and fifth meals.
Below is a snipet of our high street survival guide of UK nation wide chain GREGGS , you can see by looking at the calorie contents of a simple snack as your going by day to day activities how easy it can be over consume daily calories and how it could effect your goals.
Splitting Up Your Meals
Track your meals for the next few days to see how many calories you're actually eating. If you're exceeding your daily calorie goal, plan your three meals a day to stay within your calorie budget.
You can divide your calories among your three meals any way you'd like. If your goal is 2,100 calories per day, for example, and you divide it equally, each meal would contain around 700 calories. If you like to eat a small breakfast and a larger dinner, you might allot 400 calories for breakfast, 800 calories for lunch and 900 calories for dinner.
It's helpful to know what those amounts of calories look like.
A Balancing Act
When it comes to weight, excess calories cause weight gain, and not enough calories can cause you to be underweight. Consuming enough, but not too many, calories helps your body maintain a delicate energy balance. Oversize portions and high-calorie junk foods play a large role in excess calorie consumption. Choosing lean meats and fruits and vegetables is a way to manage your calories.
Choosing Healthy Foods
As you can see, you can eat quite a lot of food in three meals while staying within your calorie budget. It's easy to do when you cut out junk foods, processed foods, fried and fatty foods, sugar and desserts that are high in calories and low in nutrients. When you choose healthy, whole foods such as fruits and vegetables, lean protein and whole grains, it is less challenging to lower your calorie intake and still feel full.
Edited by Steve Stone